That, though, is Birmingham — Alabama’s largest city and center of business, medicine and banking. None of that explains Montevallo.

About 6,000 people live in that Shelby County city, that’s it. It’s home to a distinguished university. Its mayor, Hollie Cost, is a professor at the University of Montevallo. (Imagine Jacksonville, just smaller and closer to Birmingham.) And it has the Montevallo Acceptance Project, a three-year-old LGBTQ-advocacy group that was more MacArthur than McClellan. It fought.

“Today, Montevallo’s elected leaders have sent a strong message that they will support their LGBTQ constituents — not just with words, but also with policy,” Eva Kendrick, the Alabama state director of the Human Rights Council, said in April.

You know what’s coming.

If this can happen in Jefferson and Shelby counties, why can’t it happen in Calhoun County?

Sure, Oxford’s out. And Jacksonville lawmakers just aren’t that political. But Anniston? Even if you don’t give a rip about LGBTQ rights, there’s an economic-development angle that mustn’t be discounted. Don’t think that didn’t play a role in Birmingham, which tried to become a finalist for Amazon’s coveted second corporate headquarters.

Anniston, like Birmingham, has a new national monument dedicated to civil rights and an uncomfortable past with matters of equality. Two current council members say racial inequality in the city hasn’t changed all that much. Anniston needs to change its narrative, and what better way than following the path of Birmingham and Montevallo? That’s why I asked Anniston Mayor Jack Draper about it. “(It) really hasn’t been on the radar,” he said in a text. “I don’t mind looking at the issue, though.”

He should. Anniston could do much worse than proving to the world that it values equality enough to codify it. If only the state would do the same.